The day after her death was a lovely, balmy day, and I went to work, as usual. Mr. Alexander Snow, the hotel manager, was surprised to see me. He reminds me of an owl. He has tortoiseshell glasses that are very large for his squat face. His thinning hair is slicked back, with a widow’s peak. No one else at the hotel likes him much. Gran used to say, Never mind what others think; it’s what you think that matters. And I agree. One must live by her own moral code, not follow like a sheep, blindly.
“Molly, what are you doing here?” Mr. Snow asked when I showed up for work the day after Gran died. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Mr. Preston told me that your grandmother passed away yesterday. I already called in a replacement for your shift. I assumed you’d take today off.”
“Mr. Snow, why did you assume?” I asked. “As Gran used to say, when you assume, you make an A-S-S out of U and ME.”
Mr. Snow looked like he was going to regurgitate a mouse. “Please accept my condolences. And are you sure you don’t want the day off?”
“It was Gran who died, not me,” I replied. “The show must go on, you know.”
His eyes widened, which perhaps suggests shock? I’ll never understand it—why people find the truth more shocking than lies.
Still, Mr. Snow relented. “As you wish, Molly.”
A few minutes later, I was downstairs in one of the housekeeping change rooms donning my maid’s uniform as I do every day, as I did just this morning, as I’ll do tomorrow even though someone else—not my gran—died today. And not at home but at the hotel.
Yes. That’s right. Today at work, I found a guest very dead in his bed. Mr. Black. The Mr. Black. Other than that, my workday was as normal as ever.
Isn’t it interesting how one seismic event can change your memory of what occurred? Workdays usually slide together, the daily tasks blending into one another. The trash bins I empty on the fourth floor meld into those on the third. I would swear I’m cleaning Suite 410, the corner room that overlooks the west side of the street, but actually I’m at the other end of the hotel, in Room 430, the east-side corner room, which is the mirror inverse of Suite 410. But then something out of the ordinary occurs—such as finding Mr. Black very dead in his bed—and suddenly the day crystalizes, turns from gas to solid in an instant. Every moment becomes memorable, unique from all the other days of work that came before.
It was today, around three in the afternoon, nearing the end of my shift, when the seismic event occurred. I’d cleaned all of my assigned rooms already, including the Blacks’ penthouse on the fourth floor, but I needed to return to the suite to finish cleaning their bathroom.
Don’t think for a moment that I’m sloppy or disorganized in my work just because I cleaned the Black penthouse twice. When I clean a room, I attack it from top to bottom. I leave it spotless and pristine—no surface left unwiped, no grime left behind. Cleanliness is next to godliness, my gran used to say, and I believe that’s a better tenet to live by than most. I don’t cut corners, I shine them. No fingerprint left to erase, no smear left to clear.
So it’s not that I simply got lazy and decided not to clean the Blacks’ bathroom when I scoured the rest of their suite this morning. Au contraire, the bathroom was guest-occupied at the time of my first sanitation visit. Giselle, Mr. Black’s current wife, hopped in the shower soon after I arrived. And while she granted me permission （more or less） to clean the rest of the penthouse while she bathed, she lingered for rather a long time in the shower, so much so that steam began to snake and billow out of the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door.
* * *
—
Mr. Charles Black and his second wife, Giselle Black, are longtime repeat guests at the Regency Grand. Everyone in the hotel knows them; everyone in the whole country knows of them. Mr. Black stays—or rather, stayed—with us for at least a week every month while he oversaw his real-estate affairs in the city. Mr. Black is—was—a famous impresario, a magnate, a tycoon. He and Giselle often graced the society pages. He’d be described as “a middle-aged silver fox,” though, to be clear, he is neither silver nor a fox. Giselle, meanwhile, was oft described as “a young, lithe trophy socialite.”
I found this description complimentary, but when Gran read it, she disagreed. When I asked why, she said, It’s what’s between the lines, not on them.
Mr. and Mrs. Black have been married a short time, about two years. We at the Regency Grand have been fortunate that this esteemed couple regularly grace our hotel. It gives us prestige. Which in turn means more guests. Which in turn means I have a job.